A GOSPEL THAT DOES NOT RIP YOU OFF

It is said that George Macdonald highlights the love and the severity of Christ. What might that mean? He writes, “When we say that God is Love, do we teach men that their fear of Him is groundless? No. As much as they fear will come upon them, possibly far more. . . . The wrath will consume what they call themselves; so that the selves God made shall appear.” (1)

Jesus is gracious towards sinners. It’s not a grace that rationalises non-life as His life.

HE IS OUR GLORY
God hates sin because it makes us what we are not. His loathing of degradation and the wilful ignorance that perpetuates it is as sharp as His desire for our glory. It’s not ok to live some muted life because this is our perspective. It could be argued that that to live without spirit and life is worse a sin than the common immoralities of the flesh.

LIES ARE DEATH
God does not bathe us in grace so that we can continue in some lesser form of us. Grace provides the opportunity to repent of obstinate notions that distort God and cripple us. Make us lame because these ideas are a distortion of God and a perversion our ourselves. Any particle of untruth adopted as our truth degrades our being and ministers some form of death. Why would Jesus who is life to the full tolerate gospels that are a perversion of His Gospel simply because it is our gospel. He wouldn’t and doesn’t. Don’t justify un-life in the name of your gospel.

UNPOLLUTED GOSPEL
Jesus calls us to repent of our favourite aberrations, of the mistaken ideas of our parents and join the straight and living way of His undiluted truth and life. With Jesus as you, you are the alpha and omega of your identity. Genuine sonship is incarnational.  “God made man, male and female, and placed man in a perfect environment. As man and woman they are made to have fellowship with God, and in themselves they are essentially social beings, in harmony with God, and in harmony with their environment. It is as male and female, in the unity of man, that they are made in communion with God, and as male and female, one man, they reflect the glory of God. Man is in the image of God.” (2) How do we humans fulfil our destiny to be this image? We become who we are as sons and daughters with agency when Christ is our life. How to do this? We agree with Christ that He has included us in His life.

(1)  George MacDonald by C S Lewis, p.5.
(2) Thomas Torrance, The Incarnation, p.38.